The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Ge-
niuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the prop-
erties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever
their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive.

  And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country.
placing it under its mental deity.

  Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd
the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental dieties from
their objects: thus began Priesthood.

  Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.

  And at length they pronounced that the Gods had orderd such
things.

  Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.

A Memorable Fancy.

  The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them
how they dared so roundly to assert. that God spake to them; and
whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunder-
stood, & so be the cause of imposition.

  Isaiah answer'd. I saw no God. nor heard any, in a finite organical
perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as
I was then perswaded. & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest
indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but
wrote.

  Then I asked: does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?

  He replied. All poets believe that it does, & in ages of imagination
this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of
a firm perswasion of any thing.

  Then Ezekiel said. The philosophy of the east taught the first prin-
ciples of human perception some nations held one principle for the
origin & some another, we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as
you now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely deriv-
ative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests & Philosophers
of other countries, and prophecying that all Gods

would at last

be proved. to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the Poetic
Genius, it was this. that our great poet King David desired so fervently
& invokes so patheticly, saying by this he conquers enemies & governs
kingdoms; and we so loved our God. that we cursed in his name all
the deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled;
from these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at
last be subject to the jews.

  This said he, like all firm perswasions, is come to pass, for all na-
tions believe the jews code and worship the jews god, and what greater
subjection can be

  I heard this with some wonder, & must confess my own conviction.
After dinner I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works, he
said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel said the same of his.

  I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three
years? he answerd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the Gre-
cian.

  I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his right
& left side? he answerd. the desire of raising other men into a percep-
tion of the infinite this the North American tribes practise. & is he
honest who resists his genius or conscience. only for the sake of pres-
ent ease or gratification?

  The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

  For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.

  This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

  But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged: this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

  If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

  For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.